Lawns Should Go the Way of the Dodo

Lawns are a false idol. They represent the ancient American ideal of taming nature to our own ends— an ideal formed in a time before we realized that we had already “tamed” nature so much that we were going to destroy ourselves. The desire for a bright green, evenly clipped, thoroughly artificial lawn comes from the same place as the desire for strict dress codes, all white neighborhoods, and dead hippies. There is no better indicator of barely concealed authoritarian sentiment than a sweltering neighborhood full of neatly trimmed lawns. The sort of person who might take on the duty of enforcing homeowner’s association lawn care bylaws is the same sort of person who would only pardon scorch marks on a lawn if they came from a burning cross.

This one is too:

Americans do not use their lawns. Americans, collectively, are obese people that sit in air-conditioned houses watching cable television. Let’s be honest: all of the millions upon millions of gallons of wasted water that we pour onto our beloved lawns do not go to benefit our children, who will be frolicking in the grass, or to enhance our communities, by providing a bucolic scene for neighborly interaction. Our kids play video games. We never talk to our neighbors. Everyone stays inside, with the climate control close at hand. The lawns that we expend so many resources on are primarily used for nothing but glancing at once in a while. They are the vegetative version of a coat of paint. And frankly, we can’t afford them any more. We need that water to grow food and to drink and to help poorly planned drought-ridden cities like yours to not dry up and blow away completely. At this point in America’s environmental evolution, diverting water to grow yourself a god damn lawn that shouldn’t even be there in the first place is like using the water supply in a lifeboat to wash your hair. It simply cannot be allowed.

Do you have a lawn? How do you justify it? Wouldn’t you be happier without it?

Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy, their son, Desmond Shearwater, and their indoor cat, B.B. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.

Kirby, let’s be honest? What you are doing is preparing to rage over something that is not your concern? Is it not the right of every human to decide how best to use his own resources? You will be going to Arizona to pass judgment and decide what is best for another human who is not your charge. You will make a great lawn Nazi?

We had a lawn back at my parents. I’m in the UK though, they kind of look after themselves in our climate. Occasional mowing, not too bad. We don’t seem to have quite the same scale of lawn-obsessed culture over here that some places in the US apparently suffer from.

I did used to work in a garden centre, and I was always astounded/disgusted by how much money some people spent on ‘lawncare’ products – weedkillers. OH NOES! SOME MOSS AND DANDELIONS! HOW UNSIGHTLY!!

So glad to see this topic brought up! I don’t have one and have found most to be fairly absurd for some time. Green lawns should simply not be allowed in arid environments (if they need to be watered) and non-organic lawn pesticides and weed killers should be outlawed because it’s absurd to be dousing our surroundings with chemicals that will likely cause us and many other life forms harm. If you do need to have a lawn, how about a small one that doesn’t use chemicals? How about enjoying the diversity of plants that appear?

I have a small lawn but when I first moved the the area my neighbor actually mowed the lawn. This went on for about 15years. The only thing he ever asked me to do was to help put his mower in the car to get it checked.
The other important thing was it is good for lawns to go dormant when there is not rain, you don’t need to water them and since I wasn’t cutting it I never watered and still do not.
I also have a flower garden and did have a small vegetable garden but am now a part of CSA.

Maybe i will add a little more garden to the lawn, although that does take water so there is a downside.

I don’t have a lawn. I have a cabin in the forest with forest (and forest critters) right up to my front and back doors. I know this preference comes from my father, who had a 4-acre lawn and who made us kids rake up the grass clippings, a job I hated with a passion. somewhere in the middle of all that raking, I decided I would never, ever have a lawn. My forest is certainly more ecologically healthy than a lawn, but my original reason for not having a lawn has nothing to do with that and everything to do with a reaction to all those teenage years of raking.

I grew up with a patio on one side, a carpark on the other, and a small front garden, and craved a lawn. (Believe me, kids, Slip n’ Slide is not something you want to play with on an asphalt street.) SInce becoming an adult, I’ve always lived in apartments. Now my parents have a house with a huge lawn (as noted above, barely used for more than trodding to the mailbox or positioning Christmas decorations), and as they live half a mile from NYC’s water supply, watering it isn’t the issue. But my dad has resodded the damn thing half a dozen times in a dozen years, and, even worse, cut down a *beautiful* little red maple tree probably nearly half a century old, because its roots were getting in the way of the lawnmower (I kid you not, and I won’t forgive him for that). I do hope to have a small patch of green someday, but I’ll make sure it’s natively planted and well-used by both humans and the rest of nature.